


Purgatory

by TheNarator



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, background cait/ronnie, i mean it's just a kiss but still, implied previous relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 06:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6318634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rather than attempt to go back and save his mother, Barry opted to send Eobard to the ARGUS prison on Lian Yu. Now they need his knowledge of the future, and there's only one person he's willing to give it to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> just in case any of you forgot that i'm reversevibe trash.

They wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t completely desperate.

Not that _they_  were doing this, Cisco thought with a touch of bitterness. _He_  was the one on this tiny little plane after all, not Barry or Caitlin. He was the one who was about to land on Lian Yu, an island so dangerous that surviving five years there was enough to put you on a level with an actual superhero. He was the one about to be escorted into the most secure military prison on the planet, hoping against hope that Amanda Waller wasn’t going to turn this into a trap. He was the one who was going to have to talk to Eobard Thawne.

It wasn’t Barry and Caitlin’s fault though. Cisco was the one who had been _requested_. He was the only one Thawne wanted to talk to, for no obvious reason besides to torture him as much as possible.

It had been a chore getting him from the pipeline to ARGUS’s metahuman prison on Lian Yu. After Barry had decided not to take his deal there was no way he could have stayed in STAR Labs; he was much too clever, too dangerous, and his presence provided a constant temptation for Barry. Better to remove him from the equation, and there was only one way to do that without sending him back to his own time: they’d contacted Oliver, Cisco had made a specialized speedster cell that could be put on a plane, and they’d set about trying to find a way to trick him into it.

In the end, all they’d had to do was ask.

“Is this what you want, Cisco?” Eobard had asked, voice calm and patient.

“Yes,” Cisco had told him. “I want you gone.”

Maybe he was remembering his voice as stronger than it had been, but those were the words.

“If it’s what you want,” Eobard had said simply, and walked nonchalantly into the transportation cell.

He supposed that if it hadn’t been for his stupid curiosity at that point he might not be in this position, but it had been far too easy. Cisco had wanted to know.

“That’s it?” he’d demanded. “That’s all it took?”

Eobard had smiled, that horrible creepy smile of sheer villainous satisfaction, and Cisco had fought the urge to physically recoil.

“When you need me,” Eobard had told him, “you’ll know where to find me.”

He hadn’t looked at Barry the whole time, had kept his eyes fixed on Cisco for as long as he possibly could as he was being transported out of the lab and loaded onto the plane. That hadn’t sat well with any of them, least of all Barry, and they‘d all agreed then and there that no matter how bad it got they would _never_  ask Thawne for help.

Then, less than a year later, it had gotten bad enough to ask Thawne for help.

Some kind of breach had opened, between their universe and the next one over, for no better reason than because the universe apparently hated them. People had come through: a man named Jay who was apparently that world’s Flash, a handful of metahumans from the other Earth, and two others who were a bit harder to deal with.

One was a villain who had done untold damage to the other version of Central City, destroyed countless lives without hesitation or remorse, and having come through the portal took every opportunity to torture and torment Cisco and the rest of the team.

The other was a terrifying speed demon named Zoom. A bit cartoonishly evil, but dangerous none the less.

What made matters worse though was that the former villain was the Earth-2 version of Harrison Wells, the man whose appearance Eobard had stolen. He looked exactly like Cisco’s murderer, the man who had betrayed him, who had wounded him so deeply he doubted he would ever recover. Being a villain, Harry Wells didn’t care, but they had to work with him anyway. Just like they now had to work with Thawne.

They had no idea how to defeat Zoom. That was the truth of it. Having taken Jay’s speed and apparently added it to his own he was so far beyond Barry they didn’t stand a chance. He seemed to know their moves before they’d even finished planning. He was always one step ahead.

So, they needed someone else who was always one step ahead.

When they’d asked Waller to get a message to Thawne, they hadn’t been sure what to expect. Gloating, maybe. Bargaining for his freedom. Another offer to help Barry save his mother. Perhaps even just a simple attempt to make them wait for his answer. Of all the things they had come up with though, an immediate agreement to tell them whatever they wanted as long as Cisco would come to ask the questions in person was not on the list.

“No,” had been Cisco’s first response.

“We have to,” Barry had replied, looking pleadingly at him. Cisco honestly couldn’t tell if he was frustrated that he couldn’t do it himself or relieved that he didn’t have to. Either way, he certainly expected Cisco to do it in his place.

“This is obviously a trick,” Caitlin had argued.

“We don’t have a choice,” Barry had told her. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if we did. He’s not asking for anything unreasonable, he just wants to see Cisco. I think it’s worth the risk.”

He’d been right, obviously. They wouldn’t have made the request in the first place if they hadn’t been desperate enough to try anything. Whatever small scrap of bitterness he felt at having to do this alone was inconsequential in the face of Barry’s responsibility to stay in Central City, to protect it from Zoom. Caitlin needed to stay in case Barry was hurt, but they could last without Cisco for a few days.

Thus Cisco found himself looking out the window of a tiny little plane as they came in for landing on an island whose name meant Purgatory.

There was no one official waiting for him, like a warden or Amanda Waller, but he was swiftly ushered inside and down a series of barren concrete hallways by six stern-faced guards. The whole place was underground, and it was eerily quiet down there but for the stomping of army-grade boots and the occasional _beep_ of a keycard being swiped. No one would make eye contact with him, not even as they were telling him where to go, and the guards that weren’t part of his little escort detail seemed to either not notice or not care that he was even in their super secret military prison. 

Eventually he was brought into a large room with steel walls, a single light fixture overhead, and nothing for furniture but one wing-backed leather armchair facing a wall. The guards did not follow him inside, and Cisco jumped as the door banged shut behind him. Immediately a handful of worst-case scenarios started playing in his head, first and foremost the one about this being _his_  cell because Amanda Waller had decided his metahuman powers were worth studying for some strange reason. All those fears were superseded however when one of the walls opened, sliding upwards and away to reveal a second room connected to the first, separated only by a plate of speedster-proof glass.

At least, he assumed it was speedster-proof glass. He couldn’t imagine they’d have contained the speedster on the other side of it any other way.

Thawne had quite the little set-up, it seemed. He had a wing-backed armchair identical to the one on Cisco’s side of the room, but also a metal side table, a desk against one wall, and two well-stocked bookshelves. The desk had more books stacked on it, and a handful of loose sheets of paper covered in dense writing that Cisco couldn’t make out from where was standing. There was also an empty plate; clearly that was also where Eobard took his meals. That more than anything made it apparent to Cisco where exactly he was.

He was in the airlock.

“Oh great,” he grumbled, turning to glare at the door, “that’s just great.”

Eobard, who had been reading when he entered, looked up.

“Cisco,” he said, smiling as though pleasantly surprised, and in a flash of red lightning his chair had been moved to face the dividing wall the same way that Cisco’s was.

“Thawne,” Cisco replied carefully as he took the empty seat.

His coldness, however, did nothing to deter Eobard’s good mood. “How are you?” he asked, as though he and Cisco were any two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while.

Cisco had a million questions, not the least of which was why Eobard was acting so nonchalant. He wanted explanations for so many of the things Eobard had said. He wanted to know why the speedster had been watching him so intently when he’d been extracted from STAR Labs. He wanted to know why _he_  had been chosen to come to this hell-hole to get information.

Asking for that information, however, was the only question he felt comfortable with. “Tell me how to stop Zoom.”

“In a minute,” Eobard said dismissively, “first tell me how you are.”

“I’m fine,” Cisco retorted. “Now tell me-”

“How’s Caitlin?” Eobard interrupted, as though he hadn’t been speaking.

“Did you bring me here to make small talk?” Cisco snapped. He was on edge, and his nerves had no patience for Eobard’s games.

“No,” Eobard told him placidly, unperturbed by Cisco’s outburst, “but it may be the only chance I have for a long time to do so.”

“You can chat with the guards,” Cisco told him flatly.

“They don’t make for very stimulating conversation,” Eobard protested, with a look of mock distress.

“Is that why you brought me here?” Cisco demanded. “Stimulating conversation?”

“I brought you here to talk,” Eobard corrected.

“About Zoom,” Cisco finished for him.

Eobard shook his head. “About us.”

Cisco looked at him in disbelief. “There is no us-” he began, intent on laying that out fully, but Eobard cut him off again.

“There was,” he insisted. “There can be again.”

Cisco paused. He couldn’t deny that there had once been a lot between them, and much of it still lingered even after it had been torn asunder by Eobard’s betrayal. There was no chance of having it back, Cisco didn’t want it back, but Eobard was clearly still clinging to it. If he played this right, then for the first time he had something he could use.

“Not if you brought me here to jerk me around,” he said evenly, refusing to confirm or deny Eobard’s wish.

The older man smiled, pleased and proud, and Cisco couldn’t help but find it unsettling. As brilliant as Eobard was, he wasn’t sure he wanted the approval of someone like him.

“Quid pro quo,” Eobard offered. “Tell me about what’s going on, and I’ll tell you about Zoom.”

Cisco took a deep breath. Now they were getting somewhere.

“Well, a breach opened, between our Earth and-”

“I know that,” Eobard waved a hand dismissively. “I read the history books. Tell me about you. You and Caitlin, how are you?”

“We’re . . . okay, I guess,” Cisco hedged, determined to keep his end of the deal but not sure how much he wanted to say. “We’re both still working with Barry. We’d be a lot better if not for this whole Zoom thing-”

“How’s Ronnie?” Eobard wanted to know

Cisco shook his head. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

Eobard’s smile grew wider. He rephrased the question. “How is Caitlin enjoying being married?”

“She likes it, I guess,” Cisco shrugged, but figured there was no harm in telling the truth here. “They had a good time on their honeymoon. She seems . . . happy.”

“And you?” Eobard asked, more gently than before. By the quality of his voice this question seemed more important than the others, though Cisco couldn’t imagine why.

Unlike with Caitlin, Cisco wasn’t sure how much of his own sad little life these days he wanted to share with Eobard. There wasn’t much he could throw in the older man’s face, to show how unaffected he was. There wasn’t much to report on his life at all.

Instead Cisco fell back on sarcasm. “I’d be a lot happier if I didn’t have an evil speed demon from hell rampaging through my city.”

“Is there anyone new in your life?” Eobard probed, and . . . well it made a _kind_  of sense that he would want to know that, even if he had no right to the question.

It would look bad to just flat out refuse to answer though. “There was this girl,” he said evasively. “Kendra.”

“Saunders?” Eobard asked, frowning.

“How did you-” Eobard raised an eyebrow. “Right,” Cisco said glumly. “Future knowledge.”

“I can tell you right now it’s not going to last,” Eobard told him, without a hint of sympathy. Clearly his possessiveness was one of the things that remained.

“Yeah the whole reincarnated winged soulmate thing clued me in,” Cisco assured him, and he couldn’t stop the way his voice cracked just a little. Clearly a happy, normal relationship just wasn’t for him.

At this Eobard’s face grew lined with concern. “I’m sorry,” he said, all genuineness, and Cisco’s throat closed because he sounded exactly as he had that day in the pipeline. When he’d apologized for . . .

“For what?” Cisco asked, a little defensively, because where the hell did Eobard get off acting all satisfied with Kendra leaving right up until it was obvious that wouldn’t get him what he wanted from Cisco? “No, I’m genuinely asking. See you have this tendency to be only sorry for the really weird stuff, not any of the stuff you _should_  be sorry for.”

“Cisco-” Eobard began gently, but this time it was Cisco’s turn to interrupt. He hadn’t been finished.

“Not for killing me, but just for the fact that I remembered it.”

There was a pause. Cisco forced himself to steady his breathing, swallowing the lump in his throat. Eobard was looking at him with a miserable, pitying expression, and Cisco wasn’t sure what to do with that. He waited for Eobard to speak first.

“I wasn’t sorry because you remembered it, Cisco,” the older man said at last, voice soft and calm and sorrowful.

Cisco frowned. “Then why were you-”

“I was sorry because of what I knew would happen next.” Eobard explained. “I still am.”

“What would happen next?” Cisco repeated, still confused.

“Your powers.” Eobard went on. “I knew, whether Barry succeeded or failed-”

“Or didn’t fall for your scheme at all.”

“-that you’d have to go through mastering your powers alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Cisco told him firmly. “I have Barry-”

“Barry has no idea how your powers work,” Eobard snapped, and for the first time he seemed less than in control of himself, talking faster in his agitation, “and somehow I doubt he’s put much effort into finding out. You have no one to teach you, no one to train you, and for that I am truly sorry. I should have been there for you, like I was for Bar-”

“Shut up!” Cisco yelled, standing up from the armchair to approach the glass. “I don’t want you here for me, I don’t want you anywhere near me! I want what I came for, I want you to tell me how to stop Zoom, and I want to get as far away from you as I can!”

Eobard was smiling again. Cisco wasn’t sure whether he had abandoned his guilt or sympathy or whatever it had been, or if it had never existed in the first place. Now he was smiling, grinning in villainous satisfaction, and Cisco couldn’t help the feeling that he’d walked right into a trap.

“You see,” Eobard drawled, “if you’d just let the conversation flow naturally, you’d know by now that that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Cisco blinked. “What?”

Eobard’s smile got, somehow, even wider. “Stopping Zoom is exactly what your powers are for.”

Cisco backed up at step, staring at Eobard in disbelief. “What?” he repeated. His powers? Stop Zoom? Impossible.

Eobard nodded. “You have the power to defeat Zoom, Cisco,” he confirmed. “It’s always been inside you, you just haven’t learned how to tap into it yet.”

“How?” Cisco demanded. If there was a way he could defeat Zoom alone, without putting anyone else at risk-

But then Eobard spoke again. “It’s not really something you can just  _explain_ ,” he said pointedly, nodding to the steel door in one corner of the dividing wall.

Of course. There was no possible way it could be that easy, in fact it probably wasn’t even true. This was just a trick, one more lie to add to the pile so that Eobard Thawne could have free reign of Central City once more.

Cisco shook his head. “You’re so full of it,” he spat. “You expect me to, what, let you out so you can show me? Try again, _Thawne_ , I’m not falling for that one.”

“I don’t have firsthand experience with your powers,” Eobard elaborated. “I’ll talk you through what I can, but there’s only so much I can teach you without a practical demonstration.”

“Practical demonstration?” Cisco repeated. “Like what, you killing me again?”

Eobard opened his mouth, then closed it again. He could not say that he would never do such a thing, because he already had. He couldn’t deny what he’d done, and there could be no excusing it.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

“I don’t have your memory of the event,” he stated simply, “I can never truly know what happened. But can you look me in the eye and tell me it was easy for me? That I didn’t struggle? That my voice didn’t break as I tried to explain, because I _know_  I explained myself to you Cisco. I never would have let you die like that without knowing the truth.”

Now it was Cisco’s turn to open and close his mouth mutely. He couldn’t deny any of it: Eobard had explained, his voice had broken, he had seemed like he was in pain. Not as much pain as Cisco, obviously, but the look on Eobard’s face had grown clearer in his mind as time went on and now he knew just how sad his expression had been. He’d had no reason to lie, not then of all times.

“Do you think they feed me a speedster’s diet in here?” Eobard went on softly. “I’m too weak, mentally and physically, to harm you. I couldn’t if I wanted to, and I would never, ever, _want_  that.”

He stood up, and through the simple black clothes Cisco could see that he had somehow grown thinner. It seemed unlikely that ARGUS were actually starving him -- desperate prisoners do desperate things, after all -- but if he were using his speed too much then a diet that had once been perfectly reasonable would fall short of his needs. 

“You shouldn’t use your power so much then,” he said reflexively, then immediately felt mortified at the slip. He shook himself, then looked back up at Eobard. He was still smiling, but it wasn’t smug or satisfied this time. Instead he was looking at Cisco in something like wonder, a deep fondness clearly visible in his eyes. It made Cisco look at the floor again, because no one, no one except Eobard, had ever looked at him that way.

“Don’t read into that,” Cisco ordered weakly.

“Cisco,” Eobard said his name softly, tenderly, and with a reverence that had the power to make Cisco shiver even from feet away. “Come here, sweet boy, and let me show you what your power can do.”

Never in all their years of knowing each other had Cisco been able to resist when Eobard called to him like that, and it seemed he wasn’t about to start now. Slowly, hesitantly but helpless to disobey, he went to the steel door and turned the wheel to open it.

Amazingly Eobard did not simply dart outside and lock Cisco in the moment the door was open. Instead he waited patiently for Cisco to enter, leaving the door open as he came to stand before the man who had once been his everything. Then he closed the distance Cisco had left between them with a few slow steps.

“Cisco,” Eobard whispered fondly, reaching for him, but suddenly that image brought a dozen others racing to the front of Cisco’s mind. The time Eobard had killed him. The time Harry had simulated the action to manipulate him. All the times Harry had raised a hand to him, armed with a tool or even just his fist, a glint of pleasure in his eye as he watched Cisco recoil.

Cisco made a soft noise of protest and stepped automatically backwards, his hands coming up reflexively to shield his heart.

Eobard looked taken aback. “What’s wrong?” he asked in alarm, one hand coming up to try and brush Cisco’s hair out of his face, but Cisco flinched again before Eobard had even touched him.

“You’ve never been afraid of me,” Eobard recalled. “Even after you remembered that I’d killed you, you were never afraid. You didn’t cower like this.”

Slowly, careful not to startle Cisco, he reached out a hand and cupped his face, turning it up to look at the taller man.

“Who’s been cruel to you wearing my face, I wonder,” Eobard said, a note of anger in his voice. “This other Earth, it contains a doppleganger of Harrison Wells does it not?”

“It did,” Cisco confirmed. He hadn’t yet let his hands fall away from his chest. “He’s here now, on this Earth.”

“He’s been . . . unkind to you,” Eobard speculated, and Cisco looked down. “No,” Eobard said firmly, gripping Cisco’s chin and tilting his head upwards again. “Never let him make you ashamed. You are worth a thousand times more than him. Never forget, he is your inferior in every way.”

The words, as they always had, lit Cisco up inside. His hands fell from their defensive position as warm pleasure curled in his belly at the praise, spoken in Harrison’s soft and soothing voice, as though all that mattered in the world was the two of them. He wanted that voice to teach him, as it had Barry. He wanted that voice to tell him what to do, as it always had.

“Shh,” Eobard went on as Cisco’s eyes drifted closed in pleasure. “That’s it. Deep breaths, and keep your eyes closed. Listen to the sound of my voice.”

Cisco could do nothing else, letting that voice wash over him as he breathed deeply through his nose.

“Everything in the universe, everything in the multiverse, vibrates at a particular frequency,” Eobard explained. “You can sense them, even if you can’t tell yet. All you’ve seen so far is the disturbances, the places where the vibrations are interrupted, like the breaches or points where the timeline has been altered.”

“I could see more?” Cisco wanted to know.

“Yes,” Eobard told him, a note of excitement in his otherwise calm voice, and Cisco _ached_  to make him more excited, more intrigued and fascinated and pleased. “You can’t just see them though, you can manipulate them. You can alter the vibrations in any number of ways, but one such way is to resolve the disturbances.”

“I can close the breaches?” Cisco opened his eyes, but Eobard’s hand drifted over them until they closed again.

“Yes,” Eobard repeated, his hands moving to tuck Cisco’s hair behind his ears, “and you can do more than that. A speedster’s connection to the speed force is another such disturbance, albeit a more stable one because only one person ever uses it. You can resolve that disturbance too.”

“How?” Cisco asked, this time without opening his eyes. If he could cut off Zoom’s connection to the speed force they could beat him, they could win, and then everyone would be safe.

“It starts within you,” Eobard explained, his fingers stroking gently through Cisco’s hair. “You’re vibrating too, Cisco, at a new frequency now that you’re a metahuman. When your frequency encounters a disturbance it will recalibrate it to harmonize with the rest of the universe. Meet the disturbance head-on and correct it.”

“But I passed through the breach,” Cisco protested without heat. “It didn’t close.”

“That’s because your vibration frequency was contained within your body,” Eobard told him. “You need to learn to let it out, let it vibrate past the borders of your skin and wash over the world like a wave.”

“Like ripples in a pond,” Cisco said.

He didn’t need to see Eobard’s face to know he was smiling. “Exactly, my clever boy.”

“How do I do it?”

“Deep breaths,” Eobard repeated. “Feel your heartbeat. Feel the movement of your body, even as you stand still. You’re vibrating, Cisco, can you feel it?”

“Yes,” Cisco whispered. He could feel it, could feel his body humming with a strange resonance he hadn’t felt before. It seemed suddenly too big to contain, like he was going to vibrate out of his skin, and he struggled to hold it in.

“Don’t fight it,” Eobard instructed, his hands moving to cup Cisco’s face, tilting it up towards his own. “Let it go.”

With that, Eobard kissed him. It wasn’t at all deep, just a press of the older man’s lips to his, but it ripped the last vestige of Cisco’s control away. The vibrations he was feeling spilled out, radiating outward from his chest, from his heart, to wash over the room as Eobard Thawne claimed his lips one more time.

It was the sound of cracking glass that brought Cisco back to reality.

“No!” he cried, reeling backward and turning to face the glass wall. To his horror a large crack had appeared in it, running perpendicular to his body. He turned to look at Eobard fearfully, but Eobard wasn’t looking at the crack. He was looking at Cisco, his eyes full of awe and wonder and reverence. There was something else in them too, something that look suspiciously like . . .

“You bastard,” Cisco accused, backing towards the door. He had to get out of here, quickly; if there was so much as a chance the glass would hold-

Eobard, however, glanced at the crack with complete indifference, then turned his attention immediately back to Cisco. “That?” he asked, “I couldn’t use that if I wanted to. Weren’t you paying attention? My speed is gone, and will be for some time.”

“You could have been lying about that,” Cisco pointed out.

Eobard shrugged. “I could,” he conceded, “but if that were the case, wouldn’t I be gone by now?”

That was a good point. Cisco stared at him, frowning in confusion, but Eobard simply withdrew and went to sit once more in his armchair.

“You’re not even going to try?” Cisco asked.

Eobard smiled, and it was his smug, satisfied smile again. “Now Cisco,” he said patiently, “if I were to leave this place, then how would you know where to find me, once you realize that you need me again?”

Cisco shook his head in denial, but Eobard Thawne was nothing if not patient. He knew his resolve would last longer than Cisco’s obstinance. They both knew.

“No, I’m not leaving,” Eobard said. “If I stay here, you and I will be seeing a lot more of each other. And right now? That is all I want in this world.”

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea how vibe's canon powers work, i'm just making stuff up.


End file.
